Old Friends, Indeed

   It is always nice when old friends visit the Bayou.  While very few "people" friends drop by, critter friends abound.  This suits me fine as I would much rather be around animals as they do not thrive on drama but rather just try to thrive.  Their goal is survival not upheaval.  If only humans could act accordingly, this old world would be a far better place.

  While on the pier, it was mighty nice to have a visit from the alligator.  At first, I was afraid that my presence on the pier would make the gator shy away but it obviously had no qualms about continuing its slow passage to the depths of the Bayou.  It had come from the west (my cousin's place) and slowly made its way past my brother's place and then on to ours.  The gator was in no hurry to get anywhere so I had a fine opportunity to grab a few photographs.

  It actually made me happy to see our friendly gator.  I had heard tell that some folks had complained about "seeing an alligator" in the area even though there has never been a problem.  With the influx of new residents all wishing for waterfront property, the gators will probably be eliminated far too soon.  This aggravates me as the gators were here first.  We have all resided side by side with nary a problem.  Soon, I fear that they will go the wayside just as the bald eagles have.  Humans...humans are going to ruin the world for everyone simply because of greed and unfounded fears.

Friends...Come What May

   It is funny how friends come and go.  Today, a friend that I had lost contact with for some 35 years popped in to see me.  We reconnected a couple of years back as if nary a day had passed.  It felt almost as if we were back in high school chatting about the cute boy who was in our algebra class or the adorable sweater that our classmate was wearing.  Our visit was superb and the time flew by.   As much as I hate to admit it, social media is at least good about reconnecting folks.  Ann and I were able to continue a friendship we started over 50 years ago.

  A couple of other friends came back to the Bayou a few days ago.  Gus and Cinderella (named by the Grand Princess) were diving for mullet.  These are two brown pelicans which may or may not be the same two that my granddaughter named.  It matters not as, from that point onward, ANY pair of brown pelicans will be dubbed Gus and Cinderella.  The birds were busy working the water but were also seeking shelter from the hurricane winds to our west.  They knew to seek safe harbor in the bays and bayous just as the boat owners do.  The pelicans (and the boats) were all gone yesterday. The open waters were safe once again.  The birds may be gone for a while but the attachment to the Bayou is strong.  They will be back.  Old friends...true friends are like that.

The Art Gallery II

  Last evening, I reminisced about two ladies that were prominent figures in instilling the love of art in me during my early years...well, throughout my life.  The watercolor paintings were done by a Helen Vignes and are a favorite acquisition of mine.  They were acquired by hook and crook and will remain in the Little Bayou House for as long as I am here.  I enjoy the paintings and the friendship behind them.  Tonight, I share fond memories of Ms. Helen's dear sister, Ms. Ida.  Although both ladies worked together during their most productive years, you can often see vast difference in their styles.  While Ms. Helen dabbled in mainly watercolors on paper, her sister leaned more toward acrylics on canvas.  Ms. Helen often added a much more whimsical touch to her pieces than her sister.  Ms. Ida tended to lean toward portraying the detail of her subjects.  This is perhaps why watercolors were the medium of choice for Ms. Helen.  Things needed to be done quickly and smoothly.  Ms. Ida could spend more time poking in the fine detail work.

  Ms. Ida (Ida Lapp) was much like her sister, yet, oh, so different.  I have two of her art pieces hanging in the Little Bayou House.  These were acquired much like the ones of Helen Vignes!  One came from a church rummage sale and I was fortunate enough to snag the painting for mere pennies on the dollar!  No one realized that original art could be priceless, if even only to the buyer.  This piece is a tall vase of zinnias.  It appealed to me, not only because of Pop's vast gardens of the flowers, but simply because of the style and colors used.   Deep, rich hues in the background make the blooms really pop!  The piece goes well with the heavy Victorian furniture that fills the living room!  The other canvas is of a blissful, mountain cabin with tendrils of smoke wisping from the chimney.  The idyllic setting brings a certain sensation of fresh air, mountain streams and peace.  This piece hung in the old farmhouse where I spent my childhood years.  Mom gave me the painting a few years before her passing.  

  Ms. Ida was also a family friend for as far back as I can remember.  She would often visit my grandparents who (at one time lived next door to where the Little Bayou House now stands).  Later, she came to the old farm to visit with Mom and, then, years later to our place.  Ms. Ida was not only an exceptional painter, she was also quite the crafter.  One of the fondest memories of Darling Daughter is of Ms. Ida teaching her to make greeting cards.  Elizabeth was not more than five or six years old when the card-making would take over our kitchen table.  The old lady's hands carefully helped the tiny fingers snip and glue the cards together.  Later, she taught Elizabeth to create fanciful "portraits" of Victorian ladies complete with feathered hats and bits of lace.  Their friendship lasted until the passing of the dear lady.  Although Ms. Ida is no longer with us, the love of art and crafting lives on in Darling Daughter.

  The fact that these two ladies took the time to share their knowledge and love of art with two little girls so many years apart is, in itself, pretty amazing.  My love began with the first visit to their home art "gallery" and has spanned a lifetime. The ladies allowed me to bring Darling Daughter to their house to browse the rooms filled with art.  Elizabeth's love was established and was prodded along with the weekly visits from the ladies.  Their sweet ways will be something we always cherish.  One thing I find slightly odd about my four paintings is that there are two still life floral paintings and two of cabin scenes...one of each by the ladies. Watercolor pansies and a bayou scene by Helen Vignes and acrylic zinnias and a mountain scene by Ida Lapp adorn the walls on either side of the french doors!  I smile each time I head outside.  I feel blessed having the art pieces and the memories of these two perfectly delightful ladies!

The Art Gallery

 Years and years ago, I had the opportunity to become totally awed by an entire "museum" of original art pieces.  Mom and my grandmother took me with them when they went to visit some friends and I was allowed to wander through several rooms of the most beautiful paintings I had ever seen.  Of course, I was a mere child that had never been exposed to much art so any painting was an incredible piece to me.  I was enamored by the fact that some one had actually been able to put flowers, birds, animals, trees and buildings on a flat piece of canvas and make it really look like something.  There were hundreds of paintings at my disposal so I meandered through the rooms of their house doing nothing less than gasping at the beauty.  Then!  Then, the ladies took me downstairs to a sort of closed in area underneath their house.  This was once a garage but had been turned into a makeshift art studio/gallery.  Many, many more pieces of art were hanging there.  Every wall was covered with paintings. In fact, there were even paintings on the ceiling!  Some were framed but many were just the stretched canvases.  Again, I was allowed to wander aimlessly ogling the artwork.  The ladies showed me their easels, paints, brushes and canvases and even some art pieces "in the works".  They each took the time to make sure a little girl found a love of art.  Two little old ladies, who had never had an art class in their whole lives, taught me more about what it means to express what is trapped inside than any instructor that I ever had.  This was and, to this day, my only experience of being in an art "museum" where I truly became mesmerized by the works.  These two "un"acclaimed artists were so prolific in their renderings that they could have put many famous artists to shame.  To my knowledge, neither lady ever sold a single painting but they donated many to charity or church fundraisers.  If you liked it, they gave it to you.  

  Today, there are several paintings hanging in my house that are by these very talented ladies.  I wish I had more.  Each time, I pass by one of their pictures, a flood of memories comes back and, once again, I am awed by their talent.  The ladies are both gone now and it saddens me that most of their paintings were destroyed, many by a hurricane that took their house but the rest were viewed as rubbish and tossed the wayside.  Tonight, I stood looking at two of the paintings that I have acquired through a bit of finagling.  One of the paintings is of a vase of pansies and it was given to my aunt years ago.  The piece went with her to West Virginia where it was hung for some fifty years in her home. The piece is a water-color on paper and, over the years, had been exposed to moisture and has a few spots on it.  When my cousin asked if I wanted it before he threw it in the trash, I jumped at the chance!  I had an original!  Then, when I was visiting a distant relative, she asked if there was any of the paintings in her house that I wished to have left to me.  Yes!  I wanted a painting of a river that her mother had done and one of a bayou by "Ms. Helen"!  Several years ago, sadly, this relative passed away but she had kept her word and left me the two paintings with the sweetest note of how she knew the paintings were going to be given a good home and not be discarded because they were not by famous artists.

  The ladies, Helen Vignes and Ida Lapp, were friends of my grandmother.  Then, after grandmother passed, the friendship continued with my mother.   Later, I was blessed to call them friends and (even though she was not much more than a toddler) Darling Daughter was given the opportunity to share time with them.  Four generations of our family had the good fortune to know these ladies.  The paintings posted here, hang in my living room.  Both are by Helen Vignes.  The watercolor of lovely pansies and the bayou scene both mean so much to me.  I have several of the paintings by Ida Lapp and will share those later.  The paintings and the ladies will always be cherished!
 

What a pair!

  If you read at all, you will eventually come across tales of unusual friendships in the animal world.  Critters have a decent amount of love to share given a half of chance.  I don't care if it is a rhino that has befriended a sheep or a chicken that loves a cat, their friendships seem to flourish because there is no interruption by meddlers.  To my way of thinking, people are the only critters that show a bit of jealousy when it comes to other people and their friendships.  It is ridiculous!  But, that said, those in the critter world just don't care about all of the drama in the human world.  They just live the way they feel.  Pretty neat.

  The old dog, Mr. PJ, has been feeling a good bit better since his surgery.  He now actually looks forward to his daily walks.  While he was ill, his walking was more like trudging and at a tremendously slow pace.  I had time to observe a lot of things during these snail-paced meanderings.  One of the things that I noticed was that a juvenile gray squirrel seemed to be following us.  At first, it lingered in the treetops but was never too far from our path.  Later, the little squirrel would often come down from the tree and busy itself on the ground.  Now that the old dog is better, our hikes have sped up a bit.  He does his own thing off-leash.  He takes a walk down the lower part of the yard near the marsh.  That little squirrel seems elated that Mr. PJ is better as now the squirrel follows more closely.  As soon as we get down near the old oak in the front yard, the squirrel stays within a few feet of the dog.  The dog, however, seems oblivious to the friendship-offering critter.  He plods along unaware that he has a miniature shadow.  

  It amuses me that this unlikely pair take the daily walks together.  Normally, the dog would be chasing the squirrel and the squirrel would be high in the treetops but not with this duo!  They are buddies to the end!  I am supposing that as the weather chills and food gets hard to find, I had better stick a few dog treats in my pocket so Mr. PJ can share a snack with his little buddy.  That would be a nice gesture.

Yo, ho, ho

  Yo, ho, ho, A pirating we shall go!  Yep, it almost that time of year!  The Annual Clue Hunt on the Bayou is just around the corner and barring any interruption by a certain hurricane that is out there brewing, things are coming along right on schedule!  There is a 26 foot mast (and crow's nest) lodged haphazardly in a tree in the front yard, there is a piece of a ship's wreckage creating a tunnel near the Swamp Witch's hut and, best of all, there is a full sized cannon waiting to be aimed out over the bay!  We shall be pirates!

  Some think this is all a bit much for a single month of fun but we find it a lot of fun and what else could we be doing that would be more worth the trouble?  Our teams are already booking dates and are expressing excitement as they await their turn to solve our mystery!  Me?  I am slowly preparing myself to fulfill my role in this whole fantasy saga.  Its a pirate's life for me!  Ok..so maybe an old lady pirate is not that intimidating but I can dream, right?  This transformation is coming along nicely but not without a bit of a struggle.  I needed a costume and, well, I do not sew.  Or, at least, I did not sew!  I am learning and, with the encouragement of a very sweet and talented friend (albeit long distance friend), I have turned out part of my costume.  This is a very exciting thing for me!  At my age, I never thought I would have the opportunity nor the gumption to tackle such a feat but here I am costuming!





 

42 Pounds and a Good Friend

  Every year, my husband drives to Alabama to purchase 100 pounds of pecans.  These are in-shell but cracked.  We give a good many of the pecans as gifts to friends and coworkers but the remainder is mine to do with as I see fit.  Since I bake a lot, the nuts come in mighty handy!  This year, "mine" came out to be just about 42 pounds.  That is a lot of pecans to shell by yourself!  Thank goodness, my good friend came to help.  Darlene had gotten ten pounds of pecans so we shelled hers first then set to work on the ones that I was to keep. She has been doing this for the past couple of years and it sure saves me a lot of work.  Shelling 42 pounds of pecans by yourself is a tedious task.  With her here, we did it in a record time of about 3 hours!!  Of course, in that 3 hours we also took a couple of coffee breaks (Well, I did. She had lemonade.), did a lot of talking and an equal amount of laughing.  The time flew by and we were almost sad to see the box get empty.

  After shelling that many pecans, it is only natural for me to bake.  Son put in a request for the Pecan Tassies (recipe included in "Cooking on the Bayou" page on this blog) so...Pecan Tassies it was.  This is the second batch of these tasty treats that I have made this season.  He loves them, as does just about everyone who tastes the treats.  Since Darlene had helped with the pecan shelling and baking, she took a good many tassies home with her.  Her son loves them just about as much as mine does.  The rest of the pecans were air-dried, bagged and stuck in the freezer for future baking.

  Pecans are one of those so-called "super" foods that can lead to a healthier body.  With their high protein and "good" fats, they are a great alternative to meat.  Personally, since I am a pesco-vegetarian, I am always on the lookout for meat substitutes.   Meat seems to not agree with me in so many ways physically, that I have totally given up trying to eat it.  (Seafood is a different story, though!)  Eating tree nuts provides a tasty alternative.  These pecans are my healthy choice! (As long as I do not eat too many tassies!)